


The Man Who Walked Through Fire

by Lue4028



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Alternate Universe - World War I, Angst, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Blood and Violence, Dracula Influence/References, Drama & Romance, F/M, Falling In Love, Fantasy, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Historical Dress, Historical Fantasy, Lots of character death, M/M, Mostly Johnlock, Mutual Pining, Mysterious Sherlock, Past Rape/Non-con, Romance, Slow Burn, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Sherlock, Suicide Attempt, Tragic Romance, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vampire Sherlock, Victorian, angsty backstory, tags have spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-12 21:47:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15349452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: AU where John, a soldier serving in the New Army 21st division during world war I, is saved by a recluse that dresses like Victorian-era nobility and has a thing about blood.**Spoilerz**Yes, that was a very subtle vampire Sherlock allusion.





	The Man Who Walked Through Fire

Late October 1915

The infantry is celebrating their return to reserves after a brutal season on the frostlines, squandering their commission on lagers and spirits at the tavern. The crowd consists of a total of two dozen soldiers of the northumberland fusilier regiment, flooding the bar and stirring up a riot, loud and obnoxious and hollering at the bar maids.

While enjoying himself a pint, one soldier notices a man perched at a out-of-the-way corner table amidst the commotion. The soldier can't help but stare, intrigued by the strange, brooding atmosphere of the man sitting at the bar, not drinking anything. He has a cloak thrown over his shoulders and an unusually aristocratic, regal bearing that is at odds with the commonplace, unrefined backdrop of the tavern. He keeps to himself, very poised and still and waiting, far away from the appeals of the various brews they have on tap. But he also appears to be curiously on-edge, nervously tapping his fingers, giving off the impression of an addict trying to restrain himself.

Shrouded in the dark recesses of the tavern, an air of ominousness hangs over the stranger like a dark cloud. By chance, the soldier catches the fellow's eye when he occasions a fleeting glance toward him, the shadows unveiling his pale face. The stranger returns the his gaze for a drawn-out minute, during which the taunts and jeers of his more boisterous counterparts fade away. The stranger's eyes are striking in color and vaguely preternatural in their compelling hold, thrilling and terrifying and electrifying in a way that quickens the pace of his pulse.

Then, unexpectedly, he's gone. In a swerve of footstool tearing across the ground and a flash of silver eyes, he takes his leave, as if having taken offense to the soldier's unchecked stare. It's only seconds later that the soldier recovers his senses enough to notice the cloaked man left a coin, still spinning on the table. He hollers after the man to call his attention to it. But he's gone out the back door in a furl of cape.

When he retrieves the coin piece, it occurs to him it's unlike any currency he's ever seen, inscribed in a foreign language with a royal crest, and dated with the year 1868. It appears to be made of solid gold and of an alarming monetary value to leave behind-- enough to buy them all several dozen rounds. But rather than join his mates and plunge head-first into another celebratory bender, the soldier is lured outside by the mystery of the man who had seemed so strangely out of place.

He steps out tavern's backdoor, where only business of a seedy, clandestine nature need take place, and he catches sight of the caped man's ominous silhouette receding down the alleyway. Upon breaching his lips, the unearthly chill in the air burns in his lungs, making his skin tingle and hair stand on end.

He calls for him to wait, reaching for his shoulder, when suddenly the caped man turns and grips him by the neck with a gloved hand, slamming the soldier back against the stone wall. The soldier looks back at him with wide, startled eyes, completely taken off guard when after a couple months on the war-torn front he'd thought he'd seen everything. As the gaslight glances off his form, the soldier can see he has the ethereal complexion of a ghost, like he's never seen the light of day. What's more, he looks like something that walked out of the last century, a Victorian blouse with a ruby-pinned cravat beneath his vest.

The look in his eye is unmistakable in its murderous intent and it dawns on him that he's contending for his life.

The man's breath hitches. Gingerly, he removes his hand, his fingertips shaking like an addict suffering withdrawal. Then he quickly makes himself scarce and disappears from view, vanishing into the depths of the cavernous alleyway. The soldier clutches his neck, catching his breath, and can't shake the feeling he just brushed shoulders with death.

  
A week and half later, the infantry is called upon as reinforcements to stage a large frontal assault near the coal-mining village of Loos. The attempt to gain ground on the western front fails and they suffer heavy casualties. The soldier watches as the regiment falls into chaos and his comrades are felled in the midst of the foray, one by one. It's not long before he, too, takes a shot to the shoulder and falls to the ground, gun powder and ash settling all around. What trees and brush there were have been leveled, the earth torn up by grenades and land mine explosions.

The wound to his chest wouldn't necessarily be fatal if all the stretcher carriers and medical personal from the regimental aid post were not dead beside him, unable to stave the bleeding or stabilize his condition. He drags himself into a ditch to barricade himself against shellfire and reaches for his emergency field-dressing. He applies pressure on the wound, trying to mitigate the damage best he can as he slowly bleeds out in the middle of enemy-ridden territory.

When he wakes it's to the sound of muffled voices. His vision comes blearily into focus at the excited sound of a young cadet. He thinks the cadet is saying something along the lines of 'look, this one's alive!', hollering the rest of his patrol over to his find.

After confirming he is indeed alive, unlike the rest of the fallen bodies near the reserve trenches, the enemy troop takes him roughly by the arm, eliciting a yell of pain, and brings him to an english-fluent corporal to extract what information they can out of him. The corporal asks him a series of questions, which he gets flogged for not answering. When it becomes apparent to them that he won't comply, they throw him to the ground and start tormenting him. One particularly vengeful bayonet-wielder presses a boot into his broken shoulder.

At some point, in the context of his own screams, he hears those of someone else. And then another, and then several more, this time closer. His abusers let up and stop trying to tear his arm out of its socket, their attention turned in the direction of the commotion.

Equally frightened by the alarming sounds coming from that direction, the soldier glances up to find a man approaching them, clad in a dark cape. Two infantrymen open fire on him but he disappears, reappearing behind them like a fleeting, unnatural shadow. Before they know it, he's torn his hand straight through the ribcages with his bare hands and left them crippled on the floor, leaving only two remaining survivors that are holding the soldier captive.

They make no motion to attack, daunted by the sudden, single-handed slaughter of the rest of their troop, right in the middle of the supposed safety of their camp, no less. When they train on him, the soldier realizes he recognizes those silver eyes from that night at the tavern and a tremor of dread runs through him. The soldier takes in the destruction he's wrecked and the shell casings of all of the bullets that should have riddled him. His breath quickens at the thought of his impending death at the hands of this immortalized apparition, more monster than man.

"Give me the Briton," he says in German, "give him to me and I will spare both of you." Knowing his life is at stake, the soldier's brain whirrs to life when he talks, piecing together his meaning from what little German he knows.

The infantrymen holding him seem to think that makes good sense and nod to each other. Terror runs ragged in the soldier's breath, wishful words of objection catching in his throat. They throw him forward like a human sacrifice and he falls to his knees in front of him, unable to move, like a rabbit caught in a wolf's crosshairs.

He stumbles clumsily backward as the man strides toward him, his heart pounding in his chest. But then the man deviates from his course, walking around him and past him. He slaughters the two infantry men behind him instead, each in rapid sequence, and the soldier stares breathlessly at their fallen forms in dismay.

"Stand up," the man says, this time in English, addressing him. Not wanting to become likewise eviscerated, the soldier braces his invalidated arm and struggles to his feet. The nobleman turns and bids him to follow, but the soldier only makes it a few paces before his knees buckle from under him and he hits the ground. The man turns around, hearing him collapse, and looks him over, seeing that he's not in any condition to walk.

He leaves him to retrieve the nearest horse standing by, which belonged to one of the carrying messengers he summarily executed, now lying deceased on the shrapnel-covered floor.

The quarter horse rears on its hind legs and whinnies as he approaches. Undaunted, the man pulls the two ton pound animal back down by the bridle and, with some German goading, walks it back toward the wounded soldier.

Somehow, at the man's behest, the soldier manages to hook his foot into the stirrup and mount the horse, which then obediently follows after the keeper of its reins.

The caped man guides the horse through the maze of trenches and barbed wire, up onto the vast, deserted plane of no man's land, which is filled with uncleared smoke from ammunitions and the dissipating vapors of mustard gas. It's a landscape of death, littered with bodies and rife with sunken explosives. John thinks he must be mad to walk this way, across the 100 foot gap between enemy lines, but then he remembers how the bullets failed to scatch him, leaving him unscathed.

He leads the horse back toward the destroyed remains of Loos, now in shambles and uninhabited with the exclusion of perhaps few vagrant ghosts. The trek is barren and soundless and he feels himself starting to flag, the corners of his vision going dark. The last thing he remembers is the cape on the man's shoulders billowing in the breeze and the soft touch of the chestnut's mane against his cheek.


End file.
